Clint Eastwood makes Romney’s day with an endorsement

First it was the “Queen of Porn,” then it was the star of “Dirty Harry”—Mitt Romney raked in quite a week of celebrity endorsements.

On Friday, 82-year-old Academy Award-winning legend Clint Eastwood announced his support of the presumed GOP presidential nominee, saying the country needed “a decent tax system” in which people “are not pitted against one another.”

Standing at Romney’s side, Eastwood said he was filming “Mystic River” in Massachusetts almost a decade ago when he first saw political advertisements featuring Romney, who was running for governor at the time.

“I said, God, this guy, he’s too handsome to be governor, but he does look like he could be president,” Eastwood joked. “As the years have gone by I began to think even more so about that.”

Earlier this year, speculation over Eastwood’s Chrysler commercial, one that seemed to transcend the season’s Super Bowl ads, questioned whether it was an implicit endorsement of President Obama who opted to bail out the auto industry.

“The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together. Now Motor City is fighting again,” Eastwood narrated in the ad.

In response to the whirlwind over the commercial’s possible political significance, Eastwood told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly “there is no spin in that ad” and that he was “certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama.”

Six months later, Eastwood offers his formal endorsement to Romney, who faced criticism from some for advocating in 2008 to let Detroit go bankrupt.

“Now more than ever do we need Gov. Romney,” Eastwood said at the Sun Valley event estimated to have raked in $25,000 a pop for the campaign. “I’m going to be voting for him.”